We love learning more about our contributors, and an interview seemed like a fun way to hear more about the writers and artists we publish, so we gave them a choice of questions to answer. We hope you also enjoy hearing more about the artists and their works. Get yourself a copy of our Work and Labor Issue to read "Words Like Terminal" from Lily Bastock.


What was the inspiration for the piece published in the issue?
When I read the theme of work and labor (labour to us Brits), I thought immediately of someone very important to me who was let go from their corporate job after being diagnosed with brain cancer and now struggles to make ends meet. This person was the starting point of Words like Terminal and I see them everywhere in it, but there are also two other key inspirations that fed into the piece. The first is all the headlines bubbling up out of the USA about individuals and families financially ruined by the American healthcare system. The other is this; years ago I was at a friend's house and caught the tail-end of a British housing documentary. A man with brain cancer who lost their job in a similar fashion to the person I know, and whose meagre benefits couldn't possibly cover food and rent and all the other bills a person faces, was being evicted from his home. His closing statement, dubbed over a clip of him walking away from the cameras with a hefty rucksack on his back, was 'maybe now I'm homeless, the council will finally help me'.

So Words like Terminal is, at its heart, an acknowledgement of the people who worked hard all their lives and then, after developing terminal illness, were punished financially. I want to say, you are seen and you are heard and people care. I wish I could offer more than that.


Who or what inspires your work generally?
While I can usually identify the particular moment or thought that inspired a specific story, there are definitely recurring themes that run through them all from my broader inspirations. For example, my writing often leans green or blue: leaves, trees, and botanicals, or wild rivers and the high seas. I think it makes me feel more grounded as an organism of our earth to constantly relate human experiences to nature. Words like Terminal may not be overtly green or blue, but the fly connects the character's experiences and emotions with nature in a similar way. I've used insects to reflect or explore humanity in previous work as well.

I'm also really into pirates. Unfortunately, I just couldn't find any way to squeeze a reference into this one.


What is your creative process? Do you plan pieces out or let them happen as they come?
I used to be a 'let it happen' writer for the full length of a piece, and then realised I was really bad at writing a succinct plot and dynamic characters. I now 'let it happen' for a paragraph or two to get me in the scene, but from there I have to plan or I end up just writing a 'vibe' with no clear plot. For the plan, I'll write: 1) a sentence, like a logline, of what's going to happen; 2) a few words for each character explaining their 'wants' in the scene, and how I want them to be perceived by the reader; finally, 3) three to five bullet points of the key story beats. If I'm planning a novel chapter I write an extra line to clarify how the chapter serves the overarching plot. It potentially sounds like a quite rigid writing process but I don't find that at all, as all the hundreds to thousands of words that turn a bullet list into a story are all still waiting to be written, just with some useful direction. The plan helps me shape my prose into something that's serving and developing the story I want to tell.